Dear Nancy,

I am sure that we have no idea of the sense of loss that you and your daughter are feeling right now. I hope that I am not around to experience that type of profound sorrow with a loss of someone like Steve, as my heart would surely break. We all rarely take the time to appreciate one another as we should; only realizing how special someone is when they are gone. That was not the case with Steve though. Just being around him, his infectious laugh mostly, made my life better somehow. There are some people who you do learn to appreciate while they are with us. Steve was one of them.

At your house, after the ceremony, I walked around the party with my beautiful daughter, and the lyrics to a James Taylor tune kept floating through my mind. "So the sun shines on this funeral, just the same as on a birth, the way it shines on everything that happens here on earth....". I couldn't help but try to make some sense of it all. Trying to come to some resolution of a beautiful birth and the passing of a beautiful person. I guess people have struggled with this mystery forever. Steve would have said that I was full of shit, and to have another beer. I will do that, and will think of him many, many times.

I do know one thing for sure though. I was lucky to know him.

Love,

Pete, Melissa, Stephen, and Emily